"I know why you've come... they've sent you to bring me back, but that cannot happen.."

Monday, February 12, 2007

If I attempted to do "everything" in the Burning Crusade (tBC, I like that) that was possible I'd play this game a long time. But part of that everything is faction grinding.

tBC introduced several new factions, some I'm sure familiar to many of you now - Honor Hold, Sporeggar (for you conservation/geeks), Aldor or Scryer (you can obtain one or the other but not both at the same time) - and others more lesser known like the The Violet Eye and Ashtongue Deathsworn.

In an interview with sr. vp of product development, Frank Pearce, he said "In general, reputation will be earned more quickly in the Burning Crusade, so it feels like less of a grind." I've found this to be relatively true at the moment. But now with the guild pushing toward raiding, I'm starting to feel I must raise my reputation faster than its coming in naturally just by my normal gameplay (a few quests here and there, a few instances here and there). In other words, forced grinding. If I were to go at my own pace, I think it wouldn't feel like a grind. So I only have myself to blame for wanting to keep up.

Okay, actually I blame paladins, rogues and human mages in particular! If you enjoy gaining rep, I can't imagine any other race/class combo would beat a aoeing mage with a 10% reputation gain bonus. Well except an unemployed/out of school human mage. So you've got these classes that set the bar high for the rest of us classes who can't grind mobs efficiently at all (holy priest anyone?) Of course the rep will come with time, there is no "rep decay" like there was with pvp honor and in the end as long as the race isn't called off, we can all cross the finish line(s) eventually. Its only an issue if you are expecting to raid the instances that require you to have the rep with the same group of players who are pushing it. That's when acquiring all this rep just seems like busy work.